Depicted as an aircraft (what if) operated by No. 75 Sqn Royal Australian Air Force - RAAF Base Tindal 2006
This is my second what if for the year. I really like the lines of the Rafale, particularly the single seater. one of the members at my club was selling Gekko Graphics What If decals for the Rafale, so I figured I'd grab them and the new Hobby Boss Kit for a quick and easy build. As usual AMS took over and I had to make some changes.
The Kit
Hobby Boss has coped a fit bit of flak because some (Hornets, Rafale's and Mirage III's) of it's 48 scale kits appear to close replicas of other companies products. I'm not going there but I will comment on the quality, value for money and from what I can work out accuracy.
I'll make mention to the Revell Kit below but I've not actually seen one hence my observations are down to what I've gathered from other posts on the interweb. Also I believe that Revell doesn't actually do a Rafale-C. As the bad things are easily remembered I'll list them first
- The kit is actually of the prototype (or could be an M) which is different from the production aircraft a few respects. These being the fitment of the chaff flare dispensers (CDS), some panels (only the ardent Rafale fans would notice and there aren't many of those :D ), the pipe (fuel vent/dump?) on the underside of the right rear fuselage isn't fitted in the production C but appears on the M, and the gun cover and vent and different. I chose to scratch build the CDS and modify the kit part for the gun cover. I didn't bother with the gun vent or fuel pipe. These are only ones I noticed, hence are probably the most obvious, I'm sure there are more. From what I can gather the Revell kit has the same issues.
- The decals. Only one option for the prototype.
- The instructions. A bit dodgy, poor painting guides for details, and I think down right wrong in couple of places (rack for the Centre line tank was one place I fitted the kit part and then realised I wasn't what I wanted. If it doesn't fit when you dry fit then have a think and look at the other bits. Good references are essential.
- No engine faces... Looking down the intakes there is just a hole and you can see out the vents on the underside of the aircraft and out the wheel wells. The Revell kit has the same problem from what I can see.
- External Stores, the MICA missiles, I reckon they are terrible. The 2000 lt. tanks look to pointy on the nose, on the plus side the weld lines on the Hobby Boss ones are engraved. Revel's are better shape wise at the nose have the more accurate raised weld lines. Still I prefer the engraved lines on the Hobby Boss offering. I'd fix the nose with a few swipes of a sanding stick if I could be bother. Both the Revell and Hobby Boss had poor detail for the vents/drains on the underside so I had to fix that.
- The intake join to fuselage, a bit of step here but easily fixed if you think about it prior to gluing. It the same on the Revell kit.
- Not as many clear parts as the Revell Kit (so I've been told). Particularly the lights on the leading edges and seekers for the Magic missiles. I scratch built the bits for the leading edge out of clear plastic. A bit fiddly but worth it.
- Cockpit, needs a bit of work. Ejection seat is OK but again benefits from some scratch building.
Although it sounds like I bagging this kit many of these are pretty minor and apply to plenty of other kits I've built. Now for the Good bits
- Detail, very nice, the panel lines are engraved to the perfect depth IMHO. I tend to use a few coats of paint/ sealers and sometimes the fine lines on Hasegawa kits, particularly get easily filled. I've seen some comments that the plastic is softer than Revell' s but I found it to be the same as every other kit I've built other than Airfix, which is considerably softer in my experience.
- Fit. Over all very good. Not many issues, except for those mentioned. It goes together pretty easily with a minimal filler. Had a small problem with the wings to fuselage join, but that was probably more my fault.
- Clear parts, although a bit lacking in number (see above),. but what you get are nice and clear, look accurate and fit well.
- Weapons , OK, 4 MICA EM's, 2 Magics, 2 Apache, 2 2000 Lt tanks and 2 1250 tanks. Would have loved some ASSM's or Paveways though. The Revell kit doesn't have the 1250 lt. tanks from what I've gathered.
- Value for money, Well I paid about $30 AUD for it so I reckon it's pretty good.
Overall, I'd say, if you can get the Revell kit, then do so purely for the clear bits on the leading edge of the wings, and the fact there are more decal options (Although I believe they don't have accurate set for a line unit either).
The Build
The cockpit was reasonably basic, but modern jet cockpits can be bare with the large MFD's used these days. The pictures show what I did to make it look more convincing. I used stuff from the Eduard PE set for the ejection seat (See below).
The backs of the Apache cruise missile's were a bit big and bare so I used a cotton bud to make them look more like the real thing.
The vents on the bottom of the drop tanks looked way to shallow, plus they had a nasty seem running through them. I had some good images of the underside of the 2000 gal tanks so another bit of scratch building. The wing lights were cut out and replaced with a bit of clear plastic bent and trimmed to shape. The Intake had plenty of ejection marks but as I ended using intake blanks fixing this was unnecessary.
The Rafale has CDS launchers on the rear of the aircraft near the tail. The kit doesn't have these at all. Pretty sure the Revell kit is the same. Skyraider Models do a conversion set but I was to tight to purchase it (it would have ended up being more than the kit). I cut the sections out, used milli-put to shape the curves and plastic are to fill the other holes. My wife made the decals using MS Word. They were printed on my el-cheapo laser printer.
Painting and Finishing
The paint scheme came from the Gekko Graphics What if Decal sheet. It had 2 suggestions, a 3 tone brown and a 2 green 1 brown (similar to SEA) scheme. The browns in the Gekko scheme are not quite the ones I chose. I saw a picture of a model A-10 in the experimental desert scheme on this site. I liked the colours so decided to use similar ones on this kit. After much deliberation I chose Tamiya Acrylics for the colours. I used XF 57 Buff, XF 59 Desert yellow and XF 64 Red brown.
Using my Sparmax DH103 airbrush I painted the whole kit XF 57 buff first, then using a soft brown colour pencil I marked out the rough pattern for the red brown. I then painted the dark brown. Immediately after I want around the outline of the red brown with the desert yellow. A fair bit of touching up followed using all colours until I was happy with the pattern.
A coat of Polly scale gloss then onto the wash. I've used Promodellers Weathering Sludge Wash on my last few kits and I love it. It's so forgiving as it is water based. Also you don't need to seal it before it applying decals. After the wash was cleaned off it was onto the decal.
The few stencils on the kit decal sheet were predictably in French so I dug out the decal folder. I just put a few stencils from various spare sheets in some spots, e.g. the Danger triangles for the ejection seats.
The Gekko Graphics decals were very fragile and had to be cut out individually, however they settled down reasonably well. After getting the sharks mouth nestled down I rushed in to show the wife. She cruelly pointed out I had it on the wrong way. There was no way it was coming off, thankfully after an email to Richard Chafer at Gekko Graphics I received a whole replacement sheet in the mail. Thanks Mate!!!!. After the decals everything was seal sealed with Gunze Flat and then some chalks were sued for some weathering.
After a few touch ups the small details were added, this took about 2 weeks (why does this take so long) as I kept having to touch things up. I spent a few days trying to get the MICA missiles looking presentable, they are still not that flash. The kit comes with 2 2000 lt. tanks but I swapped my 2 1250 lt. tanks for a 2000 lt. tank. It was from the Revell kit and it's nose is different in profile. See the review above for more on the tanks.
The horrible empty intakes were solved with scratch built blanks made from tin foil and tissue paper trimmed to fit. Overall I'm pretty happy with the results.
The Photos
